From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Ellison, producer of this show, and we're bringing you stories from a Moth meme stage at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, California.

It was produced in partnership with the Public Radio Station KCRW. The poet and storyteller, Dame Wilburn, was the host of the night. The theme was beneath the armor. Here's Dame.

Good evening Santa Barbara, how are you doing? Welcome to the Moth. We are so happy, so excited to be here.

Thank you KCRW for having us. Thank you so much for being here this evening. You look amazing. My reading glasses say that you look amazing. All right, so our theme tonight is beneath the armor.

And even though I'd like to have a conversation with you about beneath the armor, I, something more pressing came up backstage and I had to talk to you about it.

So this is my second time in Santa Barbara, and I am from Detroit, Michigan. And thank you. So I bring you greetings from Detroit by saying, what up though? That's native Detroit in case you don't speak it. But you are all spoiled.

I don't know if you know it. I don't know if you know it. And I don't mean it as an insult. I'm jealous. There are lemons growing at your airport. Did you know that?

Nothing grows at the Detroit airport but disdain. I came off that plane and walked out of the Santa Barbara airport and said, are you kidding me right now?

And they're potted. They're potted lemon trees. They're not lemon trees for slim and selling. These are your, these are decorative lemons. These aren't, these aren't, these aren't our people lemons.

These are our, these are, these are these lemons are simply to add a touch of yellow to the sidewalk. Also, as much as I think that you all, your city is beautiful and it seems to be like there's a lot of money in this town.

There was also somebody out front scalping moth tickets. Like somehow that means we've arrived? Like I don't know.

You know, your scalping tickets to the moth, that's got to be the most Santa Barbara thing I've ever heard.

That's the kind of thing that I will tell other cities about you besides the lemons.

But again, thank you so much for having us and we introduce our storytellers by asking them a question. And our question tonight is when was the last time you felt invincible?

So I asked our first storyteller when was the last time you felt invincible and he said writing my bike without using my hands.

And I said, why does that make you feel invincible? And he says, because I do it in L.A. in the middle of the night. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Monty Montepard.

So I'm in my truck driving through the dark across Alaska. If you haven't been to Alaska, it's big.

And I'm heading toward McCarthy. McCarthy is a redneck hippie town at the end of a 60 mile dirt road in the middle of Wrangles St. Elias National Park,

your country's largest national park don't feel bad. Nobody's heard of the place. And the population of McCarthy is like 200 people and at least 100 dogs.

And it's at the toe of a gigantic glacier, the confluence of two rivers, the base of some of the most spectacular mountains you will ever see. It might be the most beautiful place on the planet.

And I did not want to go back there. The night before I was on a couch in Anchorage.

I was excited. I was there to celebrate my second wedding anniversary with my wife. We'd been living apart that summer. I was living in McCarthy taking people on adventures.

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